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Social media platforms, particularly the micro-blogging site formerly known as Twitter – after it was taken over by Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk – have become a key tool in stoking up ‘culture wars’ and ‘cancellations’, in recent years, encouraging personalised and direct attacks on individuals.
These pile-ons can come from any quarter, and victimise various minorities, faiths, and ethnicities – Jews, Muslims, Hindus, women, trans people, those with physical or learning disabilities – but are often aggravated by anonymous social media accounts which can act with legal impunity.
Byline Times has often investigated these online networks in relation to Russian influence operations or public health disinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic. In a new six-month investigation, this publication has analysed a series of campaigns against prominent public figures largely led by an anonymous UK-based account on X: habibi_uk.
Part one of this investigation examines how the disinformation campaigns of habibi_uk work.
A Case Study: Misan Harriman
In May 2026, photographer Misan Harriman, Chair of the Southbank Centre, was the subject of 38 articles in the UK media during the course of 18 days around what was described as an ‘antisemitism row’, and which amounted to a sustained cancellation campaign.
Harriman is a British-Nigerian photographer and filmmaker, an Oscar nominee, the first black man to shoot a British Vogue cover and, since July 2021, chair of the country’s largest arts venue. When he turned his lens on London’s Gaza marches, he attracted attention of a different kind.
On 9 May, two days after Reform UK won 677 seats in the local elections, Harriman posted a five-minute video to Instagram. The first thing that came to mind, he said, was Susan Sontag’s reflections on the Holocaust: “She said when thinking about the Holocaust, 10% of people in any population are cruel no matter what, and 10% is merciful no matter what and the other – this is important – the other remaining 80% could be moved in either direction.” He called Reform’s gains “a warning and a rallying call”. But said of its voters: “They are not devils.”
At 6.03pm, Heidi Bachram – a Brighton-based writer – posted 57 seconds of the video on X. The Sontag framing was cut, and so was the line about “devils”. What remained could be read as a straight comparison. “He compares it to the Holocaust,” she wrote. “This is truly DISGUSTING.”
What happened next can be timed to the minute.
A CASE STUDY
Misan Harriman
Photographer, Oscar nominee, the first Black man to shoot a British Vogue cover and, since July 2021, chair of the Southbank Centre.
5 APRIL 2025
Youth Demand, a group calling for a trade embargo on Israel, blocks roads in central London.
An anonymous account, @SubversiveForce, posts that Harriman was “on hand to photograph the Youth Demand thugs today. Funny how he knew exactly where to be…” The tweet was seen just 307 times.
SEVEN WEEKS LATER
A second anonymous account, @habibi_uk, takes it up: “How to be gross, by Misan Harriman, Chair of the Southbank Centre.”
20 JUNE AND 8 JULY 2025
It attacks him twice more, by name and job title. Both posts are reposted by David Toube, general counsel of the Jewish Leadership Council.
SATURDAY 9 MAY 2026
A five-minute video.
Two days after Reform UK took 677 seats, Harriman posts to Instagram. The first thing that came to mind, he says, was Susan Sontag’s reflections on the Holocaust.
WHAT HE SAID
“She said when thinking about the Holocaust, 10 per cent of people in any population are cruel no matter what, and 10 per cent is merciful no matter what and the other — this is important — the other remaining 80 per cent could be moved in either direction.”
He calls the result “a warning and a rallying call”. Of Reform’s voters he says: “They are not devils.”
6.03PM
Heidi Bachram, a Brighton-based writer, posts 57 seconds of it on X. The Sontag framing is cut, and so is “They are not devils”. What is left can be read as a straight comparison.
“He compares it to the Holocaust. This is truly DISGUSTING.”
6.33PM
Robert Jenrick, the Reform UK MP, quotes the clip: “This crass moron should be nowhere near a taxpayer-funded organisation.”
7.15PM
Karen Pollock of the Holocaust Educational Trust quotes it too and calls his post “shocking”. David Toube reposts both.
7.30PM
The account @hearnimator tags Arts Council England and calls for action.
7.52PM
Stephen Pollard, a former editor of the Jewish Chronicle: “It is sickening that @misanharriman is even involved in a public institution.”
9.32PM
The anonymous @habibi_uk: “Misan Harriman is everything that is wrong with ‘progressive’ London. Hatred is his cause.”
10.50PM
The same account, its fifth post of the night: “Misan Harriman is a disgusting creep who loves hatred.”
BY MIDNIGHT
Five hours.
An MP, the head of a Holocaust education charity, a former newspaper editor and an anonymous account have all passed judgement on a 57-second clip.
SUNDAY 10 MAY, 3PM
The Telegraph: “Southbank Centre chief ‘compares Reform election victory to Holocaust’”. Bachram’s caption has become a national headline in under 21 hours.
MONDAY 11 MAY
The Mail: “Fury as arts chief ‘compares Reform voters to Nazi supporters’”. Harriman had said in the video that the voters were not devils.
14 – 18 MAY
The Times runs a column urging “a swift exit”, then a letter endorsing it signed by five people including Danny Cohen, and a leading article.
19 MAY
Sixty-three parliamentarians write to the Culture Secretary, citing the Telegraph twice and The Times once. The signatories include Jenrick, who posted at 6.33pm.
26 MAY
The Telegraph gives Cohen a column: “Misan Harriman is unfit to remain the Southbank Centre’s boss”. It does not say he signed the Times letter eight days before.
35 DAYS
Fifty-six press items.
Two-thirds ran in three newspaper groups: the Telegraph with 18, The Times with 16 and the Mail with three.
24 JUNE
Harriman says he will leave in the autumn, at the end of his second term. No court, regulator or inquiry has ever found him antisemitic.
WHAT WE ARE NOT SAYING
Sequence is not proof.
A clip, a quote, a repost and five attacks in one evening make a sequence. They do not, on their own, make a plan.
On 24 June, Harriman said he would leave his position as Chair of the Southbank Centre in the autumn, at the end of his second term. He and the institution both say that he told the Deputy Chair of his decision to do so in January – four months before the first headline around his Reform comments. The Telegraph’s report of his departure read: “Southbank Chief in Antisemitism Row to Stand Down a Year Early”.
The coverage of Harriman’s Reform comments had run for 35 days. Byline Times logged 56 press items on Harriman in that time, both friendly and hostile. Two-thirds of the articles were published by just three newspaper groups: the Telegraph – 18; The Times – 16; and the Mail – three.
Beneath the Telegraph’s article, a paid subscriber commented on 21 May: “Ask Mossad to deal with it. We can’t.” It received 10 likes and was still visible six months after it was first published.
“I’m very recognisable,” Harriman said. “I’m a public figure, and the Telegraph now has its readers posting things like that.” Truth, he observed, “is always optional in these sorts of smear campaigns, but it does lead to readers, real human beings, commenting and posting genuine threats to life.”
The anonymous X account @habibi_uk had been attacking Misan Harriman by name and job title for almost a year before the first article appeared.
The Lineker File
It had happened before. A year before the storm over Misan Harriman, Gary Lineker left the BBC after reposting a video about Zionism that carried a picture of a rat. He deleted it and apologised.
Byline Times went back through the same network’s posts.
Thirty-four of its accounts have named him 210 times since November 2022 – with the earliest hostile posts two-and-a-half years before the picture of the rat that cost him the BBC. A fifth of them were by @habibi_uk. They were all seen in total 7.8 million times.
THE LINEKER FILE
Gary Lineker
Since November 2022, 34 accounts in the network have named him in 210 posts. This is when they posted.
Posts the accounts wrote themselves. Reposts are counted separately.
29 NOVEMBER 2022
@habibi_uk, the anonymous account that went for Harriman, starts on Lineker over a contract in Qatar: “hahaha”.
It will name him in 39 posts, more than any other account.
22 DECEMBER 2022
@habibi_uk: “Jews! Please do not upset Gary Lineker by shooting at people who want to murder you.”
Thirty minutes later UK Lawyers for Israel addresses him: “Did you realise you were extolling a fighter of the Hamas terrorist organisation?”
Eight days on, UK Lawyers for Israel says it has complained to the BBC.
MARCH 2023
The BBC takes him off Match of the Day after he compares the language of asylum policy to 1930s Germany.
@habibi_uk posts six times in nine days. UK Lawyers for Israel says its complaint has gone to the BBC’s Executive Complaints Unit.
3 – 4 NOVEMBER 2023
Douglas Murray posts four times in two days: “Oh Gary, you’re an airhead.”
Those four posts were seen 4.7 million times, three-fifths of every view in this file. @habibi_uk posts six times in the same two days.
6 FEBRUARY 2024
Nicole Lampert in the Jewish Chronicle: “I just asked Gary Lineker about his Israel tweets and I’m still shaking with anger.”
Four weeks earlier @habibi_uk had replied to her on X: “A very unpleasant man below all that fake bonhomie.”
12 MAY 2025
The rat.
Lineker reposts to Instagram a video about Zionism that carries a picture of a rat. He deletes it, apologises unreservedly and says: “I would never knowingly share anything antisemitic.”
13 MAY 2025
The Campaign Against Antisemitism: “He must go.”
Less than two hours later a blog called Harry’s Place says he “has no place on the screens” of the BBC.
14 – 16 MAY 2025
The Board of Deputies’ president calls on the BBC to end his contract.
The Campaign Against Antisemitism starts a petition and posts about it four times in two days: “6,000 people and counting.”
18 MAY 2025
He leaves the BBC.
The Board of Deputies: “We had called for his departure and welcome this outcome.”
The Campaign Against Antisemitism, in June: “The BBC didn’t want to do it, but they were forced to.”
Twenty-eight posts in May 2025, the most in any month.
AFTERWARDS
It did not stop.
In the 16 months after May 2025 the network named him 118 times. In the two and a half years before, 92.
When he won a National Television Award that September, the Campaign Against Antisemitism asked whether it was “despite posting something antisemitic this year, or because of it?”
DECEMBER 2025
Netflix signs him. The Campaign Against Antisemitism and Labour Against Antisemitism attack the deal.
Another anonymous account, @never_again2020, takes him up: 26 posts in under eight months, second only to @habibi_uk.
APRIL 2026
The accounts say he has shared a video calling Israel the “Fourth Reich”. @never_again2020: “So now it’s an undeniable fact that Lineker is an antisemite.” It is seen 120,000 times.
Heidi Bachram, who will clip the Harriman video three weeks later, on his shortlisting for an Amnesty award: “I guess Jews don’t count in the human rights world.”
JUNE 2026
He is back on television for the World Cup, on ITV and Netflix.
Nicole Lampert: “He’s trying to pretend the rat emoji was a mistake.” Her post is seen 110,000 times.
15 JULY 2026
The target widens.
Andy Burnham gives Lineker an interview. Inside 92 minutes Jewish Women Count, @SubversiveForce, @habibi_uk and Nicole Lampert have all posted about it.
@SubversiveForce’s post is seen 390,000 times.
Twenty-one posts in July 2026, the second-highest month.
WHO CARRIES IT
Writing the post is half of it. Forty-three accounts reposted or quoted posts naming him 291 times.
@habibi_uk did so 56 times, more than anyone: Heidi Bachram six times, Nicole Lampert four.
THE COUNT
Seven anonymous accounts, 87 posts.
Nineteen named individuals wrote 85. Seven organisations wrote 32.
Shown here are 11 of the 34.
WHAT WE ARE NOT SAYING
A count is not a plot.
Every post here is public and lawful, and Lineker did share the video. The file shows who named him, how often and when. It does not show that anyone agreed to.
Posts captured to 29 September 2026. Select any dot for its totals.
What Does Habibi_UK Do?
The account at the centre of this story guards its anonymity best of all: @habibi_uk.
It joined X in April 2015. Its profile photo is a coronation portrait of Queen Elizabeth I. Its location given as “The Realm”. Its bio consists of the line the monarch is said to have scratched on a window beneath one of Sir Walter Raleigh’s: “If thy heart fails thee, climb not at all.”
Who is Habibi? Part Two – Coming Soon
Be the first to find out more about the identity of this prolific and influential account by joining our mailing list
Its profile shows more than 42,000 posts in the 10 years since 2015.
It routinely calls opponents of the war in Gaza “racists”, “hate marchers”, and “antisemites”. It reserves a particular contempt for Jews who oppose the war. It called Stephen Kapos – a child survivor of the Holocaust in Hungary – a “Jewish fig leaf”, the “token Jew” of what it brands the “hate marchers”, and then simply a “stain”. It called for Palestine Action to be proscribed on 28 January 2025 – five months before the Home Secretary acted – and has described the group’s activists as “racist vandals” in 546 posts since June 2021.
Anonymity has not kept it out of print. @habibi_uk has been cited as a source in at least 14 press articles since June 2020, in outlets including The Independent, the Evening Standard, the Mirror, the Jerusalem Post, and the Times of Israel. It has been credited for photos in the Telegraph.
The Henry Jackson Society’s November 2022 report on unrest in Leicester cites it in nine endnotes. The think tank’s July 2023 report “Britain’s New Blasphemy Police?” cites it four more times and, on its acknowledgements page, thanks “Wasiq Wasiq and Habibi for their expert feedback and review”.
The account’s email address carries a “harryblog” marker – a reference to Harry’s Place, a blog started in November 2002 that has published 20,723 posts, ten million words, under headings such as: Antisemitism, Islamism, and Israel/Palestine. Its busiest year was 2011, with 2,462 posts. In the first nine months of this year it published 33.
Harry’s Place is a private website, outside the registers of companies and charities. Its owner is unnamed, its finances are private, and its two visible sources of income are a donations button and Google adverts. For years, it reprinted posts from the Community Security Trust’s blog, and the journal of the Israel advocacy body BICOM had an account of its own on Harry’s Place.
ONE ACCOUNT
It names people.
Researchers read through the output of @habibi_uk and recorded every person it named in at least three posts.
Byline Times has analysed the accounts involved in this operation and the people they have targeted. This analysis does not take a position on whether or not the content of the attacks or criticisms are accurate or legitimate.
Jeremy Corbyn: 317 posts.
Keir Starmer: 183 posts.
Zarah Sultana: 108 posts.
PULL BACK
Seven hundred people.
Each was coded by how the account treated them: attacked, criticised, or mentioned in passing.
Source file dated 8 November 2026.
THE ATTACKED
More than half were attacked.
Three hundred and sixty-three people fall under the researchers’ “attacked” code.
The largest circles are the most frequently named: Jeremy Corbyn, David Miller, Chris Williamson, John McDonnell and Mothin Ali.
Circle size and distance from the centre both follow the post count.
A CLOSER LOOK
Members of Parliament.
Richard Burgon, Zarah Sultana, Diane Abbott, Shockat Adam and Adnan Hussain each appear in more than ninety posts.
Post counts measure how often a person is named, not how many attacks there were. One post can name several people.
THE CRITICISED
Criticism is a different code.
Two hundred and sixty-three people were coded as criticised rather than attacked.
Keir Starmer leads this layer with 183 posts. Sadiq Khan, Afzal Khan and Naz Shah follow.
The distinction is the researchers’, not ours. The borderline flag marks the 110 rows where they were least certain.
IN PASSING
The outer ring.
Seventy-four names were coded as passing references: people invoked rather than targeted.
Salman Rushdie, Anne Frank, Anders Breivik. Their presence says something about the account’s frame of reference, not about them.
Passing references are not evidence of hostility.
WHAT THIS SHOWS
Evidence first. Inference second.
A dense constellation is not proof of coordination, and a code is a researcher’s judgement, not a verdict. What the data does establish is scale and pattern.
YOUR TURN
Search a name.
Every circle opens its coding and post count. Switch layers, zoom, or drag the field.
Unverified and unidentified links are excluded.
A writer named “habibi” first appeared on Harry’s Place with a guest post on 22 October 2008. It published 536 posts on the site until May 2025. It presented itself as an authority on Islamist extremism, with “David Toube and ‘Habibi’” as the blog’s two principal contributors. Harry’s Place’s own X account has boosted @habibi_uk 279 times. Byline Times has established that the blogger and the X account are one and the same.
Only once has the mask slipped – in a courtroom. On 30 March 2021, a High Court master ordered Twitter to disclose the details behind the account to a claimant, Professor David Miller. The operator was not publicly named.
@habibi_uk had been attacking Misan Harriman in posts for almost a year before the first article about his Reform comments appeared. He was not alone. Byline Times read through the account’s output and recorded every person it named in at least three posts: 700 people. Each was coded by how the account treated them: attacked, criticised, or mentioned in passing.
Who Amplifies Habibi_UK?
It appears spontaneous to the outside eye: a spasm of algorithm-fuelled fury that flares, burns for a day or two, and dims.
Sometimes the newspapers stoke it; sometimes they start it. Byline Times set out to map the origins of the campaign against Misan Harriman and 11 other public figures who have been critical of Israeli policies in Gaza and defending the rights of Palestinians and other issues.
Fifteen accounts produced 53% of the posts attacking them. The two biggest authors are both anonymous: @SubversiveForce, with 274 posts; and the account it boosts most, @habibi_uk, with 250.
On X, a repost exploits a second follower list, and amplifies posts on these lists double that of a simple ‘like’. The algorithm boosts replies, and quote tweets boost by ten times. It also deprioritises a post after 48 hours, so a reliable partner account is critical to give it a head start. @SubversiveForce has boosted @habibi_uk 1,151 times; @habibi_uk has reciprocated 785 times. and they have posted within the same minute 174 times, twice what chance would predict. They write differently – two anonymous voices – but they are an operational unit.
WHO AMPLIFIES WHOM
It looks spontaneous.
A spasm of algorithm-fuelled fury that flares, burns a day or two and dims. Byline Times mapped 57 accounts behind the attacks on 12 public figures, and counted every time one boosted another.
A boost is a repost or a quote post.
THE TWIN
@SubversiveForce
The lead account’s partner guards its anonymity just as closely. It wrote close to 20,000 posts between April 2024 and November 2026.
The account presents as a Test Match Special-loving English patriot who needs “Morris Dancing and Cricket”.
THE PAIR
@SubversiveForce has boosted @habibi_uk 1,151 times. It is the largest flow between two anonymous accounts in the network.
@habibi_uk has boosted it back 785 times. Each boosts the other more than it boosts anyone else.
Its first quote of a @SubversiveForce post is dated 2 November 2024.
THE NAMED AMPLIFIER
David Toube, general counsel of the Jewish Leadership Council, has boosted @habibi_uk 694 times.
He is its largest named amplifier.
THE BLOG
The account of Harry’s Place, the blog where “habibi” wrote 536 posts, boosted it 279 times. @habibi_uk boosted the blog 321 times.
WHO CARRIES IT
Seven accounts, 100 boosts or more each.
Forty-one of the other 56 accounts have boosted @habibi_uk at least once: 3,497 boosts in all.
WHAT IT CARRIES
The busiest booster in the network.
@habibi_uk has boosted the other accounts 3,750 times, more than any of them. Heidi Bachram 525 times. @GnasherJew 268. Nicole Lampert 232. The Campaign Against Antisemitism 157.
THE MOST BOOSTED
Heidi Bachram.
The network has boosted her 4,371 times, more than any other account. It was her edit of a video that set off the storm over Misan Harriman.
FROM POST TO PAGE
Nicole Lampert, who writes for the Mail and the Jewish Chronicle, has been boosted 2,248 times. The same accounts carry her: John Strawson, Labour Against Antisemitism, Toube, Stop The Hate UK.
THE ORGANISATIONS
The Campaign Against Antisemitism’s account has been boosted 2,016 times, 1,298 of them by a single account, Stephen Silverman’s. Toube has boosted his own employer, the Jewish Leadership Council, 139 times.
THE WHOLE PICTURE
25,218 boosts.
Among 57 accounts, across 1,300 pairs: 34 named individuals, 12 anonymous accounts, 10 organisations and one partly identified. Shown here are 33 of the largest.
WHAT WE ARE NOT SAYING
A boost is not an order.
Reposting is public and lawful. These counts show who carries whom, and how often. They do not show who directs whom.
Timelines captured to 8 November 2026. Select any dot for its totals.
The anonymous core. The accounts accuse freely. @JoosyJew calls Green Leader Zack Polanski, who is Jewish, “the traitor within”; @MsPurpleX calls him “the token Jew”. @never_again2020 calls Nadia Sawalha an “unhinged antisemite”; and named posts of Owen Jones’ mother: “Now we know where he gets ‘it’ from.”
@vampywitchy calls Francesca Albanese “one of the new Nazis”. A fifth, @GnasherJew, names people: its website has published 147 exposés since 2021, on doctors, teachers, and other professionals, and its name is a registered trademark in a class for political lobbying.
The named amplifiers. Thirty-three accounts carry a person’s name and produced 42% of the posts. Heidi Bachram leads them: the rest have boosted her 4,371 times, the most for any account, and her 83 posts on the 12 drew 4.8 million views. It was her edit of a video that set off the storm over Misan Harriman.
Approximately half of the 33 are working journalists and commentators: among them Stephen Pollard and Jake Wallis Simons, both former editors of the Jewish Chronicle; and Nicole Lampert, who writes for the Mail and the Jewish Chronicle. Others hold office: Robert Jenrick can carry a charge from X into Parliament, as he did with Harriman; Alan Mendoza is executive director of the Henry Jackson Society, whose research cites @habibi_uk; David Toube is general counsel of the Jewish Leadership Council and boosted @habibi_uk 694 times – more than any other named account.
The Private rooms. Four people have told Byline Times of a WhatsApp group mainly consisting of journalists. Lampert described it herself in the Jewish Chronicle in October 2022: “JTwitter” – with its “sizeable wins” over a theatre, a social media company, and Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour. “You’ll see us in JTwitter out in the open,” she wrote. “Less openly are the private messenger groups… thrashing out ways to respond to new challenges, discussing ideas.” And: “Sometimes it can also be hard to keep up with who hates who.”
The Press. Byline Times counted at least 428 items critical of one or other of the 12 in a handful of papers: 235 in the Telegraph; 107 in The Times; 35 in the Mail; 34 in the Jewish Chronicle. Thirty-four writers have such items on two or more of the 12: Wallis Simons on eight, Pollard on six, Danny Cohen on four.
Byline Times has analysed the social media accounts involved and the people they have targeted. This analysis does not take a position on whether or not the content of the attacks or criticisms is either accurate or legitimate, but merely seeks to map how it operates.
Byline Times will soon publish more details of the UK resident our evidence has identified as the person behind the habibi_uk X account.
Who is Habibi? Part Two – Coming Soon
Be the first to find out more about the identity of this prolific and influential account by joining our mailing list
If you have any information for this investigation, do contact us in complete confidence at tips@bylinetimes.com
